You know that feeling, when your kayak leaves the shore, you take a deep breath and fill your lungs, brain and heart with the whole world. Everything is perfect. You put your paddle in the water for that first stroke and find that it cuts through green slush. The curtain goes down.
Still, your first thought: “Well, it’s that time of year again (sigh).” We’ve talked about this before, but it’s time to bring it up again. Should we really say “Well”? Should we get used to eutrophication, depletion, heat waves in Siberia and melting ice in the Arctic (In today’s news, we could read that the ice melted twice as much last year as an average year). No, let’s not do that.
Sweden climate neutral by 2045
We had a fantastic meeting this week with a young customer who was asked to drive the sustainability work in her company. She had therefore read a lot during the summer. Now, she was genuinely puzzled as to how little is being done in the area and exclaimed: “Sweden have committed to be climate neutral by 2045. Surely, that must mean that all companies need to do everything they can?” Yes, one might think so – you should even be able to claim that they should, because after all, it is not yet over, we can still achieve that goal, without exporting emissions to other countries.
Everyone already measure greenhouse gases, no?
At the same time, you can be surprised at the ignorance of those who actually work hard with climate issues every day. We participated in a webinar this week on how to measure greenhouse gases, where a knowledgeable person explained that “all serious companies in Sweden measure greenhouse gas emissions. You can’t get away with less today.”
That view actually makes us just as worried. Because we know he’s wrong. Very, very many serious companies do not measure. It’s not that they don’t want to. All serious companies we have met want to do good, but as you know, it is not just to start measuring. What to measure, who should do it and how to do it?
As we’ve talked about earlier, it’s quite wise to stay out of that safe bubble of opinion where everyone speaks the same language and everyone agrees. Because when looking at the world from that bubble, you might easily think that all companies already measure and work hard to reduce their emissions. They don’t. Get out of that bubble. This is not the time to relax.
We can help sorting out the questions about what and how to measure, how to set goals and create change. We’d love to. Because we refuse to get used to that green slush.
